Our Fellows

2026 P-SPINE Fellows

  • Dr. Ilika Ghosh is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rangaraju Lab at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI). She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta, India, specializing in cell biology and genetic toxicology, where she modified the surface chemistry of magnetic nanoparticles used in brain MRI to improve their biocompatibility and clearance. She also trained in microscopy at Saitama University, Japan, where she used correlative microscopy to characterize changes in cyanobacterial DNA ultrastructure across the cell cycle.

    In her current research, Dr. Ghosh investigates the energy supply mechanisms of memory formation. Her recent work provides the first direct, quantitative measurements of ATP dynamics at single-spine and single-mitochondrion resolution during synaptic plasticity in real time. Her findings reveal that spatially stabilized mitochondria function as localized power hubs that rapidly generate ATP to fuel and sustain synaptic plasticity, a conceptual shift that opens new avenues for therapeutically targeting synaptic energy supply mechanisms in neurological disorders. Dr. Ghosh’s postdoctoral research at MPFI is partly supported by the Carl Angus DeSantis Foundation for Alzheimer’s disease research.

    Dr. Ghosh’s long-term goal is to establish an independent research program investigating how the structural integrity of mitochondrial DNA, which encodes the ATP synthesis machinery, shapes energy supply during plasticity and learning, and how these mechanisms are disrupted during neurodegeneration and aging. Ultimately, Dr. Ghosh aims to identify mtDNA-based disease signatures and develop mitochondria-targeted nanoparticle therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases.

  • Dr. Cynthia Tchio is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Saxena Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, with affiliation to the Broad Institute.  Dr. Tchio is also a 2026 recipient of the prestigious Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (BWF-CASI), a career-transitioning grant supporting her move toward independent faculty position. She earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Science in the Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, and a Master's in Clinical Research, at Morehouse School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Gianluca Tosini, where she studied the role of melatonin receptor signaling during circadian disruption in lipid metabolism.

    In her postdoctoral research, Dr. Tchio integrates multi-ancestry human genetics with functional genomics to uncover the shared molecular architecture of sleep, circadian rhythms, and cardiometabolic disease. Her recent work built a multi-ancestry proteogenomic framework identifying 69 circulating proteins causally linked to sleep duration, and showed that these proteins map directly onto opposing nodes of the brain's sleep-wake circuitry, the first causal, CNS-anchored protein map of this trait. She has also functionally characterized the pleiotropic circadian variant ADCY3 Ser107Pro in human adipose tissue.

    Dr. Tchio's long-term goal is to establish an independent research program using multi-ancestry genomics and iPSC-based functional models to identify mechanism-based therapeutic targets for sleep and cardiometabolic disease. She is also deeply committed to mentorship, with strong leadership ties in the field: she is a past Board Member of the Sleep Research Society (SRS) and past Chair of the Harvard Medical School Black Postdoctoral Association (HBPA).

  • Weikang Shi is a postdoctoral fellow in the labs of Drs. Steve Chang, Anirvan Nandy, and Monika Jadi in the Department of Neuroscience at Yale University. He earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis in the lab of Dr. Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, where he used microstimulation and single-unit electrophysiology in macaques to show that orbitofrontal cortex activity causally biases value-based economic choices, supported by a Cognitive, Computational and Systems Neuroscience predoctoral fellowship. As a postdoctoral fellow, he has been funded by a Wu Tsai Institute fellowship, an NIMH T32, and an NIMH K99 Award. His current work combines naturalistic behavioral paradigms, wireless neurophysiology, and computational modeling to study how freely interacting marmosets achieve moment-to-moment cooperation, revealing that cooperative decisions rely on a gaze-gated accumulation of social evidence in the prefrontal cortex. His long-term goal is to establish a research program that uses naturalistic marmoset paradigms, game-theoretic tasks, causal circuit manipulation, and computational modeling to reveal how cortico-striatal circuits generate strategic social decisions, with implications for both neuropsychiatric disorders marked by social deficits and multi-agent artificial intelligence.

2025 P-SPINE Fellows

  • Dr. Ahmad Beyh is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at Rutgers University, working under the mentorship of Dr. Linden Parkes. His current work takes a computational modeling approach to investigate how brain structure shapes neural dynamics in health and disease. This work builds on his training in neuroanatomy, diffusion MRI tractography, and functional MRI, which he previously used to study the functional role of specific white matter pathways in the human brain. Dr. Beyh's academic journey began with a psychology degree from the American University of Beirut, followed by neuroscience training at King's College London, where he earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. He then undertook postdoctoral research at University College London, focusing on conscious visual perception in partially blind patients. His interest in how the brain processes dynamic percepts was initially sparked by his exploration of motion through long-exposure photography, which remains an active creative pursuit. 

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  • Rebecca Moore earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The City College of New York in 2014. She went on to complete a PhD in Molecular Biology at Princeton University under the mentorship of Dr. Coleen Murphy, where she identified a novel transgenerational aversive learning paradigm. Currently, Dr. Moore is a Damon Runyon–HHMI Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sehgal Lab in the Department of Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the long-term and inherited effects of environmental light perturbations (e.g., light pollution) on learning and memory. She aims to establish her own research group to investigate tissue-to-tissue communication underlying inherited behaviors, with a particular focus on changing environmental conditions.

    Beyond her research, Dr. Moore is deeply committed to mentorship and fostering an inclusive, curiosity-driven, and supportive scientific environment. She has also been actively engaged in community and leadership service at every stage of her academic career including mentoring high school and undergraduate students, and teaching hand’s on laboratory courses for high school students as part of the Accelerated Learning Academy. 

  • Kate Brynildsen is a postdoctoral fellow in the Complex Systems Lab, led by Dr. Dani S. Bassett, within the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Penn in the lab of Dr. Julie Blendy, where she studied genetic, neural, and behavioral correlates of opioid and nicotine dependence in mouse models, supported by a T32 from NIDA. As a postdoctoral researcher, she has been funded by NIH T32 and F32 fellowships. Her current work applies complex systems and network science approaches to modeling brain dynamics in health and disease. Recently, she has used linear diffusion modeling to predict the spread of pathological proteins along the brain’s structural connectome and to identify molecular drivers of regional vulnerability to pathology in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease. Her long-term goal is to establish a research program that integrates computational modeling with experimental validation to reveal principles of multiscale brain dysfunction and guide novel therapeutic strategies.

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UPDATES: PI at Moberly lab (Florida State University) starting in August 2026

  • Dr. Laurel Seemiller is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Crowley Lab in the Department of Biology at Penn State University. Her research focuses on understanding mechanisms of vulnerability and resilience to alcohol use, particularly in adolescent females. Her recent work has linked adolescent alcohol exposure to sex-specific behavioral changes in adulthood and disruptions in somatostatin signaling in the prefrontal cortex. Her research is supported by an NIAAA F32 Fellowship and has been recognized by the NIH Outstanding Scholars in Neuroscience Award Program. Dr. Seemiller's long-term goal is to become a tenured faculty member studying sex-specific mechanisms of addiction.

2024 P-SPINE Fellows

  • Dr. Budhaditya Chowdhury’s research interests encompass genetic and neurobiological understanding of systems-level behavior. His current research explores neurophysiological correlates of deep sleep in Drosophila and conserved mechanisms at the intersection of sleep and social behaviors. As we collectively navigate our lives through sleeplessness, Budha strives to understand what “waking up on the wrong side of the bed” means. His formative years as a Drosophila neurobiologist were spent in the lab of Prof. Edward Kravitz, learning how to fight flies, and he is currently in the lab of Prof. Orie Shafer, where he keeps flies from sleeping. Budha enjoys putting his background in computational ethology, multivariate modeling, molecular genetic analysis, and circuit mechanism to good use for his experiments in his search for simple answers to big questions. As a first-generation immigrant scientist from India, he cares deeply about representation, rights, and responsibilities. He is actively involved in efforts to decolonize science and provide broad access to tools and discourses in neuroscience for diverse communities across the US. When he has free time, Budha can be found in tennis courts, independent bookstores, and art museums.

UPDATES: PI at Chowdhury lab (Bucknell University) starting in August 2025

  • Supriya's research focuses on the neural basis of visual attention, with a particular emphasis on how attention control, neuromodulation, and perceptual processes facilitate adaptive behavior. During his Ph.D. at NCBS in India, under Dr. Sumantra Chattarji, he found that the auditory cortex plays a role in perceptual discrimination, while the lateral amygdala is crucial for generalizing learned fear, influencing the transition from an adaptive to maladaptive behavior. In his postdoctoral work with Dr. John Maunsell at the University of Chicago, Supriya studied how neuronal representations of two fundamental components of attention– selective attention and attentional intensity or effort are resilient to motivational contexts and contribute to cognitive demands. Additionally, funded by a BBRF Young Investigator Award, he identified a highly selective and specific contribution of brainstem norepinephrine neuromodulation to enhance visual attentional performance by driving perceptual sensitivity, a fundamental aspect of perception. Supriya's research is supported by a NIMH R21 award. His future research interests include investigating how contextual information is transformed into cognitive controls and how cognitive biases interfere to shape adaptive behavior.

UPDATES: Research Assistant Professor (University of Chicago) starting in Sept. 2025

  • Dr. Xuyu Qian is an NINDS K99/R00 postdoctoral fellow at Dr. Christopher Walsh’s laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on understanding the development and diseases of the human cerebral cortex using human-centric approaches. Under the mentorship of Dr. Hongjun Song and Dr. Guo-li Ming during his PhD at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Qian pioneered the development of human pluripotent stem cell-derived brain organoids and their application as disease models. Currently, he utilizes single-cell spatial transcriptomics to analyze the developing human cortex, uncovering fundamental insights into the formation and specification of distinct cortical layers and areas. By integrating organoid models, spatial omics, and human genetics, Dr. Qian aims to decode healthy developmental programs and identify the genetic and cellular disruptions that lead to diseases, paving the way for advanced therapeutic strategies.

UPDATES: PI at Qian lab (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia/UPenn) starting in June 2025

  • Dr. Robyn St. Laurent is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University in Dr. Robert Malenka’s lab. As an undergraduate at Colby College, she studied auditory synchronization in human runners, Drosophila Parkinson’s models, and neural mechanisms of cocaine reward in rats. She was a post-baccalaureate trainee with Dr. Yavin Shaham at NIDA, studying neural circuitry in relapse to drug seeking in rats. She then received her PhD from Brown in Dr. Julie Kauer’s lab and uncovered circuit-specific synaptic plasticity that was differentially regulated by opioids (supported by an F31 NRSA). As a postdoc, first in Dr. Anatol Kreitzer’s Lab at Gladstone, she identified critical amygdala circuits controlling negative reinforcement and corresponding impairments in a mouse model of obsessive-compulsive disorder that could be rescued with optogenetic manipulations. Her current research focuses on the neural circuitry controlling behaviors implicated in psychiatric illnesses and neuromodulation at inhibitory synapses with the goal of identifying new circuit-specific therapeutic interventions.

UPDATES: Senior Data Scientist at Quiver Bioscience

  • Dr. JiaBei Lin is a Research Associate in the Shorter Lab at the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on identifying and characterizing novel disaggregases, chaperones, and other biomolecules that maintain or restore protein and genome homeostasis. Specifically, she targets aberrant protein aggregation associated with amyloid-beta (Aβ), α-synuclein, TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43), and Fused-In-Sarcoma (FUS), which are linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Dr. Lin's work has been recognized and supported by the Alzheimer's Association Research Fellowship, the Warren Alpert Foundation Distinguished Scholars Fellowship, and the Mildred Cohn Distinguished Postdoctoral Award. Her ultimate career goal is to establish her own independent research laboratory dedicated to preventing and curing age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

UPDATES: PI at Lin lab (Rowan University) starting in Sept. 2025

  • Johnathan M. Borland earned bachelor degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from Emory University in 2009.  He later earned a PhD in Neuroscience at Georgia State University under the mentorship of Drs. H. Elliott Albers and Kyle J. Frantz.  He is now a 5th year postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota under the mentorship of Drs. Robert L. Meisel, Paul G. Mermelstein and Patrick E. Rothwell.  He is interested in understanding the neuronal mechanisms that regulate the rewarding properties of social interactions, with a particular focus on plasticity in synapses, oxytocin regulation and sex differences in mechanism.

UPDATES: PI at Borland lab (Pennsylvania State University) starting in Nov. 2025

  • Dr. Yunlu Zhu is interested in how gravity sensation guides our movement and why it goes wrong in diseases. Yunlu received his Ph.D. from Dr. Sarah Kucenas’ lab at the University of Virginia where he studied glia and neuroimmunology. Currently, he is a Leon Levy and Rainwater Tau Postdoctoral Fellow in the Neuroscience Institute at the NYU School of Medicine. Working in the lab of Dr. David Schoppik, Yunlu has developed new techniques for measuring behavior and neuronal function in larval zebrafish. His research has led to the identification of brainstem circuits that control gravity-guided posture and locomotion. Yunlu’s current work reveals circuit mechanisms underlying balance deficits in neurological diseases. He seeks to run a laboratory to unravel how heterogeneous behavioral deficits arise from molecular insults in diseases. In addition to his research, Dr. Zhu has a strong background in mentoring and is committed to creating a work environment that encourages discussion and curiosity. Outside the lab, he has undertaken multiple community and leadership services. Yunlu received The Christine Beattie Award from the The International Zebrafish Society in 2022.

UPDATES: PI at Zhu lab (University of Michigan) starting in May 2026

  • Dr. Dah-eun (Chloe) Chung is a postdoctoral associate and a BrightFocus fellow at the laboratory of Dr. Huda Zoghbi at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). Chloe is interested in investigating molecular drivers and suppressors of pathological protein aggregation and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative diseases. She initially developed her interest in dementia research when she was an undergraduate student majoring in biochemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. Chloe received her PhD in neuroscience at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. For her doctoral work, under the mentorship of Dr. Leonard Petrucelli, she studied the seeding and aggregation of tau protein that becomes abnormally modified in AD and other neurodegenerative tauopathies. Currently, for her postdoctoral research, Chloe is leading studies on the functions and properties of an atypical “big tau” isoform that may play unique roles in health and disease in the central nervous system. Her work has been supported by the BrightFocus Foundation Alzheimer's Disease Research Postdoctoral Fellowship and the BCM Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases (CAND).

UPDATES: PI at Chung lab (Rutgers University) starting in Jan. 2026

2023 P-SPINE Fellows

  • Deneen Lab

    Debosmita Sardar is interested in the fundamental question of how we perceive and respond to the world around us. She is a chemist holding a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Dr. Eric Schmidt’s lab at the University of Utah, and she transitioned to neurobiology for her postdoctoral research in Dr. Benjamin Deneen’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine. Her research is supported by the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award. Using glial cells in the mouse olfactory bulb, her work has shown how astrocytes utilize chemicals like serotonin to epigenetically influence olfactory sensory processing. She seeks to establish her own laboratory to delve into how astrocytes genetically encode animal sense of smell. Ultimately, she aspires to be recognized as a glial epigeneticist, deciphering the molecular mechanisms that dictate how our senses enable us to perceive our environments. Beyond research, she is committed to mentoring and advancing inclusivity in research spaces. She has undertaken several initiatives to promote postdoctoral researchers and encourage under-represented students to pursue careers in academia.

UPDATES: PI at the Sardar Lab (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) starting in Oct. 2024

  • Maguire Lab

    Dr. Kenneth Amaya is a postdoctoral fellow and DSPAN Scholar at Tufts University School of Medicine. He earned his PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences in 2021 from Dartmouth College under the guidance of Dr. Kyle Smith where he studied the neurobiology of motivation, learning, and action. He then joined the lab of Dr. Jamie Maguire at Tufts where his current research aims to disentangle basolateral amygdala microcircuit contributions to network states related to emotional learning and motivated behavior, currently funded by a K00 award from NIMH. Dr. Amaya invests his time outside of lab in initiatives aimed at increasing representation of minoritized students in higher education by being a mentor in Tufts University’s Building Diversity in the Biomedical Sciences program and serving as an academic coach and scholarship reviewer for the Native Forward Scholarship Fund.

  • Mosca Lab

    Dr. Kristen Davis received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Virginia Commonwealth University under the guidance of Dr. Young-jai You, where she studied a neural circuit controlling satiety behaviors in Caenorhabditis elegans. With an interest in studying the genetics of other quiescent behaviors, she joined the lab of Dr. David Raizen at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral research fellow to study sickness-induced sleep in C. elegans. To continue her postdoctoral training with a focus on molecular neuroscience and development, she joined the lab of Dr. Timothy Mosca at Thomas Jefferson University to study the impact of neurexin and neuroligin on the development and maintenance of central synapses in Drosophila melanogaster. Dr. Davis served on the executive board for the Jefferson Postdoctoral Association from 2020 to 2023 in multiple roles including Vice President of Social Affairs, Senior Vice President, and President.

  • Engert & Fishman Labs

    Luis Hernandez-Nunez is a Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar, a Branco Weiss fellow, and a Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) postdoctoral fellow at the laboratories of Florian Engert and Mark Fishman at Harvard University. Luis is also a visiting scientist at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus. Luis’ research is focused on the circuit mechanisms for heart-brain interactions in zebrafish. Luis has also been awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface to support his transition to junior faculty. Luis obtained his Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard in 2020. He conducted his doctoral research in Aravinthan Samuel’s lab, where he discovered molecules, cells, and circuits that mediate thermal homeostasis in larval Drosophila. Before graduate school, Luis was an undergraduate and then a postbac researcher at Thierry Emonet’s lab at Yale University. Prior to moving to the U.S., Luis studied mechatronics engineering at the National University of Engineering in Peru.

UPDATES: PI at the Hernandez-Nunez Lab (Stanford University) starting in Nov. 2025

  • Wierenga & Dale Labs

    Dr. Carolina Makowski is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiology at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and affiliated with UCSD’s Eating Disorders Center in the Department of Psychiatry. She completed her BSc in Psychology and PhD in Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Since 2019, Dr. Makowski has been an investigator within the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study Consortium, where she is currently co-chairing ABCD’s Professional Development Workgroup and is a member of ABCD’s Image Analysis Workgroup. Her research integrates multi-modal brain imaging and genomics to better understand brain development and in turn, risk factors for adolescent psychiatric disorders, particularly eating disorders. Dr. Makowski’s work is currently supported by an NIMH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award, and she was recently awarded a Young Investigator Award from the Brain Behavior Research Foundation. Her postdoctoral research has also been supported by Canadian federal (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) and provincial (Fonds de Recherche du Quebec- Santé) funding mechanisms, and the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind.

UPDATES: PI at the Makowski Lab (UCSD) starting in Feb. 2025

  • Maimon Lab

    Vikram received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and his PhD in systems biology. He is a postdoctoral researcher in Gaby Maimon's lab at The Rockefeller University, where he combines his engineering experience and systems-level perspective to gain insights into animal behavior. Vikram is interested in understanding the molecular- to circuit-level mechanisms that control the timing and outcome of individual behavioral decisions. He works with flies, with the goal of generating insights that can be applied to other animals. His work involves multiple innovative techniques, including a preparation to observe molecular and neuronal activity as stationary flies walk on a wheel, with different substrate options, and make ethological decisions. He recently found a rise-to-threshold process, in specific neurons, that controls when and where flies lay individual eggs. His current and future work explores a gamut of dynamic physiological processes that can impact decisions, from "cognitive" neural circuits in the brain to subcellular processes within the body. Vikram hopes his current and future actions help promote a scientific culture that values and supports all its individuals, and not just scientific discovery.

  • Holzbaur Lab

    Dr. Juliet Goldsmith is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in Dr. Erika Holzbaur’s lab. She received her PhD at UCSF under the supervision of Dr. Jayanta Debnath, where she found a non-canonical role of autophagy in regulating the efficiency of translation of mRNAs. As a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Holzbaur’s lab, Dr. Goldsmith found that homeostatic autophagy in neurons regulates the engulfment of mitochondrial fragments that are enriched for mitochondrial DNA. Her future work, supported by the NIH and TargetALS, will investigate how this autophagic regulation of mitochondrial DNA is affected in Alzheimer’s Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Frontotemporal Dementia, and what impact this has on local neuronal bioenergetics, synapse maintenance and neuroinflammation. The overarching goal of her research program is to understand how dysregulated autophagy contributes to the progression of neurodegenerative disease in order to identify novel therapeutic angles.

UPDATES: PI at the Goldsmith Lab (Thomas Jefferson University) starting in Sept. 2024

  • Arlotta Lab

    Noelia Antón-Bolaños is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Paola Arlotta in Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. with distinction (Cum Laude) in 2019 in Spain, focused on the critical role of prenatal thalamic activity in the precise development of sensory cortical areas (Science 2019). She was internationally recognized with the Krieg Cortical Kudos Scholar Ph.D. Award in 2020. During her postdoc, in collaboration with Irene Faravellii, Noelia devised a method for multi-donor human brain organoids to explore inter-individual susceptibility to neurotoxic stressors. Her main research interest is to understand, at the molecular and cellular level, how the human brain cortex evolves, forms, and malforms in response to perturbations, in its uniquely species-specific context.

2022 P-SPINE Fellows

  • Dr. Torres-Berrío is a Robin Chemers Neustein postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman Brain Institute at Mount Sinai and an International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) scholar. She received her PhD in Neuroscience from McGill University (Canada) under the supervision of Dr. Cecilia Flores, studying the role of microRNAs in depression. She then started her postdoctoral training with Dr. Eric J. Nestler. Her research is focused on understanding how early life stress leads to enduring epigenetic alterations in the brain’s reward system. Dr. Torres-Berrío is also a scientific advisor of “Fundación STEM sin Fronteras” (STEM Without Borders Foundation), a Colombian organization that seeks to provide young students in rural areas with opportunities for a better future in science.

UPDATES: PI at Torres-Berrio Lab (MGH Lurie Center for Autism)

  • Swetha received her MSc and Ph.D. from National Brain Research Centre, India, under the guidance of Dr. Nihar Ranjan Jana, where she studied the role of ubiquitin proteasome system, specifically E3 ligases, in Huntington’s disease and Angelman Syndrome. With a keen interest in neurodevelopment and wanting to understand the mechanism of self-organisation of brain into functional circuits, she joined Nick Spitzer’s laboratory in the Department of Neurobiology at University of California San Diego for her postdoctoral work where she is using Neurotransmitter Switching, a novel, reversible form of plasticity in the nervous system, to study the mechanisms that mediate the targeting of the appropriate synaptic partners and the function of external stimuli in shaping neural circuits.

UPDATES: PI at the Godavarthi Lab (Rochester Institute of Technology) starting in Aug. 2026

  • Dr. Martha Streng obtained a BA in Neuroscience and Behavior from Mount Holyoke College before completing her PhD in Neuroscience in the laboratory of Tim Ebner at the University of Minnesota, where she studied encoding of limb movement information by Purkinje cell simple and complex spike firing. As a postdoc with Esther Krook-Magnuson, she employs viral approaches and on-demand optogenetics to examine cerebellar interventions in temporal lobe epilepsy. More recently, in collaboration with Tim Ebner and Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, she has developed a novel technique for widefield Ca 2+ imaging of the cerebellar cortex, which she uses to investigate cerebellar network dynamics in healthy behavior and chronic epilepsy.

UPDATES: PI at Streng lab (U. of Minnesota) starting in Nov. 2023

  • Dr. Laursen obtained his PhD from Yale University, where he studied hibernating ground squirrels in the lab of Dr. Elena Gracheva to identify cellular and molecular adaptations that support mammalian nervous system function at extreme body temperatures. As a Charles A. King Trust postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Paul Garrity at Brandeis University, Dr. Laursen’s research is focused on understanding the sensory mechanisms that guide damaging behaviors of vector mosquitoes and other pest insects. He is particularly focused on the attractive heat, humidity, and gustatory cues that are detected in close proximity to hosts, food sources, and egg-laying sites. Dr. Laursen takes a comparative physiological approach combining cutting-edge genetic techniques with behavioral and physiological recordings to investigate how sensory adaptations enable a species to thrive in their niche, with ultimate goal of exploiting these systems to prevent the spread of human disease and the destruction of agricultural crops.

UPDATES: PI at the Laursen Lab (University of Washington)

  • Dr. Fernando C. Alsina obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied how negative signaling induced by neurotrophic factor receptors controls neuronal development in peripheral and central nervous system. Then he joined Dr. Debra Silver lab at Duke University as a postdoctoral researcher to investigate the role of RNA-binding proteins in brain development. His current research shows how a central RNA regulator non-canonically binds and stabilize microtubules to control neuronal maturation and brain wiring. He has received fellowships from the Argentinian National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and the Ruth K Broad Foundation. To support his future work, he has obtained an award from The Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation, and the NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF). His long-term goal is to understand how neuronal differentiation, maturation and connectivity are controlled by RNA and microtubule regulators.

UPDATES: PI at the Alsina Lab (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital)

  • Dr. Rakotomamonjy is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. She earned her PhD in Neuroscience at the University Paris XI in France, focusing on the neuroprotective mechanisms of the synthetic steroid RU486 in the developing cerebellum. She then moved to the U.S. for her postdoctoral fellowship. Under the mentorship of Dr. Alicia Guemez-Gamboa, Dr. Rakotomamonjy is now investigating molecular bases of cellular recognition that control cell fate and circuit assembly during human brain development and disease. Combining human genetics with disease modeling, her goal is to elucidate the cellular and molecular pathways that, if disrupted, contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders. Alongside her research work, Dr. Rakotomamonjy also volunteers yearly to train underrepresented postbaccalaureate and undergraduate aspiring PhD students to make the path to become a neuroscientist more welcoming for scholars of all backgrounds.

  • Dr. Amelia Cuarenta obtained her PhD from the University of Wisconsin in the lab of Dr. Anthony Auger. She investigated the effects of psychological and physiological stressors on juvenile social behavior and the retrotransposon, Line 1, in the developing rodent brain. She is now doing her postdoc in the lab of Dr. Debra Bangasser. Her current research investigates neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to stress-induced vulnerability and resilience to addiction. Dr. Cuarenta has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2022 Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology Lyn Clemens Award, an ACNP 2022 Travel Award, and is a current Society for Neuroscience NSP Fellow. In 2020, she was awarded a NIDA Diversity Supplement to support her postdoctoral research and most recently received an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology.

UPDATES: PI at the Cuarenta Lab (University of Michigan) starting in Aug. 2025

  • Dr. Lina Marcela Carmona is a postdoctoral research scientist in the lab of Dr. Rui Costa at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University. She received her B.A in molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania and began her research training in the lab of Dr. Tobias Baumgart working on biochemical characterizations of membrane phase separation. Marcela conducted her doctoral training in the Immunobiology Department at Yale University in the lab of Dr. David Schatz where she focused on the evolutionary history of adaptive immunity by examining the relationship of the Recombination Activating Gene (RAG) proteins to transposable elements. As a postdoc, she has sought to apply her interest and training to delineate molecular mechanisms of motor learning. In this work, she has characterized a critical role for corticothalmic neurons in motor cortex during movement execution. Marcela is now focused on defining the cellular pathways in these neurons which facilitate motor learning. Ultimately, her goal is to examine how molecular phenomena throughout the motor system give rise to the system level changes that drive motor learning.

UPDATES: PI at the Carmona Lab (Mass Chan Medical School)

2021 P-SPINE Fellows

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  • Dr. Daniel L. Gonzales, is a HHMI Hanna Gray postdoctoral fellow in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University. He currently works in the Nano-Neurotechnology Laboratory under Dr. Krishna Jayant, developing tools to probe neural activity at the nanoscale. He received his PhD in Applied Physics from Rice University, where he worked with Dr. Jacob Robinson to integrate bioelectronics and microfluidics to study millimeter-sized model organisms. He is also a first-generation college student and received his BS in Physics from Angelo State University. His scientific goals are to further our understanding of neural circuits and cognition by developing creative tools that leverage fundamental principles of physics. In parallel, he believes the definition of scientific excellence encompasses empowering mentorship and advocating for groups that have been historically excluded in science and academia.

UPDATES: PI of Gonzales Lab, Vanderbilt University

  • Dr Abbas obtained her PhD from King’s College London, where she used calcium imaging in live zebrafish to characterize the visually evoked responses of a neuron within the optic tectum. These superficial inhibitory interneurons exhibited size and direction selectivity and are likely involved in the generation of a novel population of direction selective neurons in the tectum from retinal ganglion cell inputs. As a Postdoctoral researcher in the Vinberg Lab, Dr Abbas uses ex vivo electroretinograms to measure the function of photoreceptors and bipolar cells, studying the function of these retinal neurons in the context of dark and light adaptation in mouse and human.

  • Dr. Pittolo has a degree in Medical Biotechnology and Neuroscience from the University of Trieste, Italy. During her PhD in the Gorostiza lab at the Institute of Bioengineering in Barcelona, Spain, she characterized small molecules to control neurotransmitter receptors with light. She then moved to the Poskanzer lab at the University of California, San Francisco, where she studied how dopamine influences the activity of an understudied glial cell type, astrocytes. Now she’s back to Europe in the Lohse lab at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, where she wants to understand how different neuromodulators interact with each other in the context of psychiatric disorders. 

  • Dr. Malvaez graduated from the University of California Irvine with a B.S. in Neurobiology where she worked with Dr. John F. Marshall evaluating how addictive substances altered striatal function. She continued at UCI, where she received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology & Behavior under the mentorship of Dr. Marcelo A. Wood. Melissa’s Ph.D. focused on exposing the role of chromatin modifying mechanisms in the development of drug-associated memories. Melissa then joined the lab of Dr. Kate Wassum at the University of California Los Angeles for her postdoctoral work, where she is currently investigating the neural substrates of goal-directed and habit behavior. 

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  • Dr. Simmie Foster is a practicing psychiatrist and research scientist in Depression Clinical and Research Program (DCRP) at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Foster graduated with honors in molecular and cell biology from the University of California at Berkeley, then completed her MD and PhD at Yale School of Medicine with Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov. Subsequently, she completed medical internship at MGH, psychiatry residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and a postdoctoral research fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Clifford Woolf, Director of the Kirby Center for Neurobiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, before joining the staff at the DCRP in 2016. Dr. Foster’s research studies the complex relationship between the immune system and the nervous system in inflammatory diseases, such as depression. Most recently, she has started to investigate the temperature dependence of neuro-immune interactions, taking a translational approach to investigate the anti-inflammatory and proteostatic effects of hyperthermia. Ultimately her goal is to develop a better understanding of the basis of inflammatory disease and point the way to making more effective treatments for patients.

  • Nathaniel G. Harnett, PhD, is an assistant neuroscientist in the Neurobiology of Fear laboratory at McLean Hospital, led by Kerry J. Ressler, MD/PhD. Dr. Harnett earned his PhD in Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham under the mentorship of David C. Knight, PhD. Dr. Harnett’s research investigates the neural mechanisms that mediate susceptibility to trauma and stress-related disorders such as PTSD. To this end, Dr. Harnett leverages multimodal neuroimaging techniques with individuals recently exposed to trauma to elucidate neural circuitry linked to acute and long-term posttraumatic stress. Ultimately, the goal of his research is to develop predictive and preventative neuroscience-based techniques to reduce the prevalence of trauma and stress-related disorders.

UPDATES: Director of NATELAB, McLean

  • Dr. Castro is an Acting Instructor at the University of Washington in the Department of Anesthesiology. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan under the guidance of Dr. Kent Berridge in 2016, studying the neuroanatomical mechanisms of motivation versus affect in cortical and subcortical brain circuits. He then began his postdoctoral training with Dr. Michael Bruchas at Washington University in St. Louis, and later at the University of Washington. His research has sought to understand the biological features underlying opioid reward in mesocorticolimbic circuits, as well develop next-generation wireless optofluidic technologies for in vivo pharmacology and optogenetics. Daniel has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2021 Wake Forest Early Career Scientist in Physiology and Pharmacology Award, Vanderbilt University Discovery Sciences Emerging Scholars honor, and ACNP 2020 Travel Award. Dr. Castro is currently funded by a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

UPDATES: PI of Castro Lab, Wash U.

  • Caroline Palavicino-Maggio is a Research Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Dr. Ed Kravitz. Caroline seeks to elucidate the neural circuitry that governs female aggression. Caroline earned her PhD with honors from Rutgers University, at the New Jersey Medical School and her BS degree from Rider College. Shortly after she began graduate school, she created her project independently, while performing lab rotations with experts in the field of intestinal nutrient transporters and dopamine receptors, respectively. As a result, she was awarded the NIH Independent Dissertation Research R36 Grant to carry out her thesis project. Caroline has also been selected for many prestigious awards from the Rutgers Society Foundation, New York Academy of Sciences, and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship . Most  recently, she was acknowledged by Cell Press in their “100 most Inspiring Hispanic/Latinx scientists in America” list. She is also a strong advocate for social justice and encouraging young people from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue STEM careers.

UPDATES: PI of Palavicino-Maggio Lab, McLean